Cropping systems & soil based analysis of south west Punjab areas through remote sensing & GIS

The major crops in southwest Punjab areas are in rabi season wheat, oat, barley, and in Kharif season cotton, mustard and sugarcane. The major cropping systems found in this area are Cotton-Wheat, Rice-Wheat and Rice-Sugarcane. The different villages of the associated district Bathinda, Muktsar and Faridkot of southwest Punjab. During ground survey with the help of GPS collected data that are required for GIS database. The soil samples were collected from different cropping system in depth of 0–15 cm and also collected location point (latitude and longitude). After chemical analysis found the major problems in low line areas viz. Mallout, Muktsar, Abulkharana, Kamiyana, Jhandoke, Sakkanwal, Sangrana, Chauntra, Harike Kalan and Lohara villages where salinity, secondary salinity and water logging problems found in large scale. Salinity patches are distributed in the crop fields. Due to salinity crop yield is dramatically reduced. The changing cropping pattern cotton-wheat areas are converted in to Rice-Wheat area. Image analysis and creation of different layers in ARC GIS 8.3 and ERDAS IMAGINE software, observed the critical situation in the study area of the cropping system. The affected blocks are Malout, Kotbhai and Lambi where water table is rising and other associated areas in the region are expected to face this problem in the near future.